Gabriela Sandoval
) | nationality= | religion= Lapsed | race= | birth= | death= | cause of death= | occupation= , | spouse= | children= Heather | family = | political party = | military branch = | sport team= | professional affiliations= Gabriela and Brandon show | political office= |}}Gabriela Sandoval was the senior co-host of the Gabriela and Brandon television show along with the junior co-host Brandon Nesbitt. Sandoval had been a star TV foreign correspondent for MSNBS when her husband César filed for divorce. This set-back in her personal life led her to push harder in her professional life. She exaggerated some of her exploits in Afghanistan and Iraq, and quickly had been caught out leading to her being fired. Sandoval needed work and had enough of a reputation left to start Gabriela and Brandon along with Nesbitt and their producer Saul Buchbinder. Still, she was bitter, viewing it as the freak show and not the big tent she had been moving towards.Alpha and Omega, pgs. 15-18, hc. Buchbinder had been pitched an idea by Nesbitt to do a Gabriela and Brandon special in Israel on the recently discovered red heifer. Buchbinder agreed and sold Sandoval on it. She did some preliminary work with a telephone interview with Chaim Avigad, a ritually pure boy on the Kibbutz Nair Tamid where the heifer was being kept.Ibid., pgs. 26-30. Sandoval, Nesbitt, Buchbinder and a large production crew and their equipment traveled from JFK to Ben Gurion Airport on El Al to Tel Aviv. She was grilled by a security officer on the purpose of her trip and with the help of Nesbitt and Buchbinder convinced him they had a legitimate purpose and were allowed to board. After arriving in Tel Aviv and an extended delay by customs, they checked into the Alexander Hotel where a fatigued Sandoval immediately went to bed.Ibid., pgs. 41-44. Sandoval woke at 4:28 in the morning and found that room service didn't start until 6:30. The desk clerk suggested the main bus terminal would have food 24 hours a day so Sandoval walked there. After clearing a security check-point, she found an open food court where she had some fuul beans which were close enough to Tex-Mex refried beans to satisfy her. She left to return to the hotel when a large van raced on the wrong side of the road to the terminal. Her reporter instincts kicked and she headed back. A huge explosion threw her to the ground but fortunately an office building protected her from most of the blast and flying debris. The fall did break Sandoval's cellphone so she couldn't call in the story but she proceeded to the blast site to see what she could and make notes for a later report. She was grabbed by the arm by an Israeli man who spoke to her in Hebrew. Sandoval replied in English which the man knew and told her they had to help those injured. She reluctantly agreed and the two did what they could until the first responders arrived.Ibid., pgs. 47-53. Sandoval met up with Nesbitt and the Gabriela and Brandon crew when they arrived on the scene to cover the disaster. The two carried out live coverage, interviewing Captain Mordechai Yehoshua of the Israeli security forces.Ibid., pgs. 57-59. They continued to broadcast until late in the day when the major US and other international news services arrived.Ibid., pgs. 63-64. Sandoval did appear on Forrest Charleston's Fox News show to give her eyewitness account and to discuss who might be responsible and possible consequences. She felt Charleston too fixated on ISIS and suggested al-Qaeda or Hezbollah as possibilities. Charleston, in Sandoval private opinion, was of the Freedom Fries school of Francophobia so she wasn't surprised he insisted France supplied the radioactive material. She countered with four alternatives: renegade Russians, Iran, Pakistan or North Korea.Ibid., pgs. 65-67. References